Wonder Woman’s sexuality has played a bizarre role in the history of the comics medium as a whole, and with Absolute Wonder Woman, Thompson and team have an opportunity to add a new chapter in the complex and complicated history of Wonder Woman’s sexuality. #wonderwoman 1/14
This issue has been the subject of debate from the outset of the character and not without consequence. Indeed, it’s been a prominent feature of many of the central and defining debates of comics studies throughout the years. 2/14
As documented by Jill Lepore in her book, “The Secret History of Wonder Woman,” the character was created to be a progressive feminine icon, but also a subversive representation of human sexuality, one that includes ample queer-coding from the outset. 3/14
Relatedly, in the 1950s, Wonder Woman was featured prominently in Frederic Wertham’s infamous “Seduction of the Innocent,” the book that caused widespread outrage over comics, ultimately leading to an artistically-limiting censorship body, the CCA. 4/14
Wertham writes “The homosexual connotation of the Wonder Woman type of story is psychologically unmistakable. …For girls, Wonder Woman and her counterparts are definitely anti-masculine….Her followers are the “Holliday Girls,” i.e. the holiday girls, the gay party girls, the gay girls… 5/14
…Wonder Woman refers to them as ‘my girls.’ Their attitude about death and murder is a mixture of the callousness of crime comics with the coyness of sweet little girls.” He also connects Wonder Woman to BDSM – Marston has admitted this – in a reading that could be described as kink-shaming. 6/14
And while the queer subtext of Wonder Woman comics is longstanding, it isn’t until 2016 that the character has been identified as canonically non-heterosexual. Author Greg Rucka establishes Wonder Woman as bisexual in his Rebirth run and confirms his interpretation in interviews. 7/14
In Rucka’s story, Diana had a previous relationship with an Amazon named Kasia. That said, a kiss to the cheek is the most physical affection depicted between the two characters on-panel. 8/14
We have seen numerous AU interpretations of Wonder Woman as openly queer, including Earth One, Dark Knights of Steel, Bombshells, and many others. The Absolute line is technically AU, but its sales put it on a different plane with a differing obligation as a DC tentpole at this point in time. 9/14
Conversely, Wonder Woman has been noticeably absent from DC’s “Pride” collections, which would seem to indicate a reticence, on the publisher’s part, to support Rucka’s interpretation of the character. Thompson has been non-commital in interviews about her Wonder Woman’s sexuality: 10/14
“I think it’s simply too soon to say if Diana is interested in Steve romantically or not. She has a lot on her plate and almost everything is new to her, so she’s not interested in boxing herself into one path when she has literally just escaped her Underworld prison.” 11/14
In issue #14 of the series, Zatanna is quite flirtatious with Diana. Issue #18 features Diana reciprocating that behaviour and also contemplating the nature of love with the Goddess Aphrodite. In short this iteration of Diana might be in love with a woman. Time (and Thompson) will tell. 12/14
The inevitable question then is simply: does it matter? Wonder Woman is a character with a longstanding queer mythology (literally and figuratively), but whether she’s overdetermined or underdetermined by her sexuality is a subjective proposition. 13/14
Into that troubling paradox lands Thompson, charged with reinventing a character who has been defined by a sexuality that has, consistently, held a huge impact within popular culture, positive and negative. It’s a strange burden to witness and worth noting, perhaps, as history in the making. 14/14










